Strangely Perfect

This is Our World

French prisoners Ride Tour de France

| 0 comments

A Week is a Long Time in..

 French prisoners Ride Tour de FranceQ.  In What?

  • In prison – yes obviously
  • In politics – yes
  • In a relationship – well yes, especially the past week for me
  • In Between News Items….

Yes! That’s the one!

Last week it was announced to the world that 196 convicted French prisoners are going to cycle this years Tour de France route.  See the Reuters News item here which originally reported the story: What could possibly go wrong?

It’s an enlightened bit of prisoner rehabititation.  The 196 inmates plus 124 obviously fit guards are doing the 17 stages, stopping in towns each night that all have a prison, but staying in hotels. 

8DBB106CBE6C9C4E437A391D1AAA3 French prisoners Ride Tour de FranceNow contrast this with the report last month about the shocking state of French jails (Prison guards’ strike hits packed French jails). 

In fact, there is no contrast.  It’s the French guards who are protesting about the poor state of things, with five to a cell etc.

Taken in this context, the cycle ride does not sound so strange now, does it?

Today the Ride Sets Off

 45865883 005865877 1 French prisoners Ride Tour de FranceMany news organisations have reported the start of the run today.  They are all using the same copy, many using the same images as well.

1507287 French prisoners Ride Tour de FranceThey all report that 194 prisoners are doing the ride compared to the fact that they all reported that 196 were going to do it last week.

So what happened to the 2 men? !!

Did they, as all the news outlets so humourously remarked, go on a “breakaway sprint” which “are obviously not allowed”?  Or maybe they feared they’d have to cycle through Mulhouse which has this interesting cycle lane to negotiate.

mulhouse French prisoners Ride Tour de FrancePicture from Warrington Cycle Campaign

Related posts:

  1. French Disco (Disko)
    I don’t care how it’s spelt. I love it, it’s like one of my jams. Wahay! See here – click...
  2. Le Tour
    08/07/2007:Excellent finish by McEwan in the TDF finish at Canterbury. Just plain guts and anger; brilliant....
  3. Cycling is popular in Paris
    Introduction This is taken from today’s CTC newsletter. I never thought it’d work! Especially in PARIS…  what do I know?...
  4. How to Commit Murder, Legally
    Introduction Simple. Live in County Durham, UK Don’t pass the driving test Drive a car, unsupervised, with your partner and...
  5. Top Banker States the Bleeding Obvious
    From the Department of the Bleeding Obvious World Bank warns of social unrest In this little snippet we find that...

Author: Strangely

The last remaining founder member of the band that would go on to publish as Crawling Chaos. SGI buddhist. Programmer and software development.

Leave a Reply

Required fields are marked *.

*


Powered by Sweet Captcha
Verify your real existence,
Drag the bow tie to the car
  • captcha
  • captcha
  • captcha
  • captcha

Attach a file Uploading File types: jpg, png, gif, zip,pdf, Max size: 3Mbytes, Max count: 3